You say potato, I say po-tah-to.

After I dropped my “dry” load up in Boise, the dispatch message directed me to swap my empty dry trailer for an empty reefer trailer at our yard in Payette, Idaho. Payette is where my company got its start, but it’s a really boring place with nothing to do, except swap trailers, which is what I did. Don’t bother ever visiting Payette unless you are in need of an empty trailer.

I drove my empty reefer trailer over to Ontario, Oregon, which is right across the Idaho border from Payette. Ontario is the home of Ore-Ida products, a company that turns nutritious, but bland potatoes into very tasty mouthfuls of salt and fat. 

Ore-Ida is owned by Heinz.

My instructions were to turn the reefer on in advance (in order to give it a fighting chance of keeping something cold) and to show up in Ontario at the Americold cold storage facility by 8:00 am. I did as I was told, and in a couple of hours my trailer was filled with crinkle cut fries and hash browns and countless other forms of what had once been the proud, noble potato.

A really grumpy Americold dude placed a red, plastic seal on my truck, checked to make sure that my reefer was set to -10 f. and then sent me on my way.

My destination was the URM Stores warehouse in Spokane, WA. URM Stores is sort of an independent grocer distributor.  I had been there before so I knew where to go, what to do and where to park for the night. It was a short trip; only about 400 miles away. 

I average only 52 mph, in case you were wondering.

The thing about grocery loads is that they want you to deliver really, really early, usually well before dawn, but they don't want you to hang out there beforehand. The truck stops around Spokane are pretty tiny and their parking spots are always filled long before I arrive. A few blocks away from the URM Stores warehouse is a Conoco station with a dirt lot, and that was my destination. It can only accommodate about ten trucks, but I got there early enough to get a spot. It’s a pothole-filled, mud lot with a rude slant, but it was good enough for the night.

My appointment was for 6:00 a.m. the following morning. I was ready before 5:00. I got my truck over to the URM entrance gate by 5:35, set the air brakes, climbed down out of the tractor and approached the guard shack. I had my Bill Of Lading paperwork in hand.

“Late?” the friendly guard asked me. “No, early, actually” I replied, then added “I’m not due until 6:00.”

He looked at a clipboard and double checked the info on his desktop computer. Then, he made a phone call. “No,” he said, “this load was due at 4:00 am.”

He told me to come back in two days. At friggin' 4:00. “Happens” he said, as if to reassure me that I wouldn’t be the first newbie driver that had gotten totally burned by somebody else's error.

I was gobsmacked. I checked my dispatch; according to my dispatch, I was on time. I drove back to the Conoco gas station and grumbled. I called in to our main office, and, in a whimpering voice, asked them to confirm my appointment time. Their records were the same: 6:00 am on Monday morning.

Normally, my company would work around this somehow. They would, in normal circumstances, just have me drop my trailer and give me something else to do and somewhere else to go. Some other schmoe could deliver the hash browns in a couple of days. But I was way up in Spokane; kind of out of the way and there was nobody else to deliver the Tater Tots but me. I would just have to sit for 48 hours until my newly revised appointment time, which was the soonest one the guard could get for me.

Spokane is an interesting city; there are plenty of trendy restaurants and cool things to see and do. Unfortunately, I was several miles from the interesting part and, besides, I had no transportation. We are not allowed to just drive our trucks any place we want, and probably wouldn’t be able to park a 53 foot-long trailer once we got there.

The Conoco had some hot food for sale, but only whatever they could deep fry. I had my normal food stash onboard too, but I hate relying solely upon it. I treated myself to some breaded Conoco chicken parts one day and some Conoco deep fried beef and bean burritos the next. I also bought some chocolate milk. Sometimes, I like to really live it up.

Tuesday night, at 9:00 or so, I checked my iPhone’s alarm to make sure that I would be woken up in time for my 4:00 am delivery. Then, I drifted off to sleep.

At about midnight, I woke up to silence. When running a reefer, silence is a really bad thing. The reefer diesel’s engine is only a few feet away from your pillow, so you always hear it running.

I put on my shorts and T-shirt, grabbed my flashlight and hurriedly climbed down barefoot to look at the digital display and see the reefer’s temperature. The temps were climbing fast and were up to about +20 degrees. Before I had gone to bed they had been at -10 degrees. After a couple days of sitting, I had managed to run the reefer’s fuel tank out of diesel fuel.

I am clearly an idiot.

It was already past midnight, my delivery was at 4:00 and my reefer temperatures were way too high. I was going to spoil an entire load of frozen food and definitely lose my job in the process. I was ruined! I called dispatch in a panic. A reassuring voice told me to drive immediately to the nearest Flying J truck stop and buy some fuel for the reefer.

I got there and filled the tank, but then I couldn’t start up the reefer. No matter what I did, the reefer’s diesel engine wouldn’t fire up and now its battery was almost flat. The fuel tank for a reefer is mounted very low, down near the wheels, and the reefer engine is mounted way up high. It wouldn’t start because the fuel couldn’t get to it; it needed to be primed. I called Dispatch back; by this time I was imagining the worst. (In my mind, I had already been fired and sent home on Greyhound)

Dispatch transferred me over to “Over the Road Support”, the in-house department which is staffed by crusty, old mechanics. Luckily, they are staffed around the clock with crusty, old mechanics.

Over the phone, a crusty guy explained to this shaken newbie how to stand up on the catwalk and prime a reefer engine, in the middle of the night, while wetting one’s pants. After what seemed like an eternity, the engine actually fired up. Almost immediately, the temperatures in the trailer went back down to below zero. I called Crusty back and thanked him as though he had just saved my life.

I arrived to the consignee on time, load intact, got unloaded quickly and was out of there by 7:00 am. 

Truckstaposition

Each day can be a bit trying.

Finding the address for a shipper in an unfamiliar city, unhooking my old trailer and locating the right new trailer in a sea of nearly identical, white trailers, backing up to it (while ensuring that the fifth wheel is at the right height), raising the balky, rusty landing gear, then scaling the load correctly, dealing with bill-of-lading paperwork, finding my way back out, negotiating crazy urban rush hour traffic (just to find the correct freeway on-ramp) while just trying to keep sane might give out the impression that a Trucker's daily life is a lot more trouble than it's worth.

I keep busy; driving, observing, listening. Trying my best to keep a positive outlook. The job can be really stressful: what with impossibly tight schedules, way too much caffeine, highway potholes that are as big as a Buick and disrupted sleep patterns all part of my daily life. There is plenty of time to think about how I arrived here, plenty of time to ponder what, when (or even if) I am ever going to do something else. Thinking about past failures, missed opportunities, long-ago loves lost, repeated errors in judgement in just about everything. But pondering, reflecting and ruminating can quickly turn to worry, brooding and dwelling. And I need to avoid all that.

A lot of what I have to do (before I actually get to go somewhere) really is a big drag, but after getting my load, I reap the reward: I get to drive a big, shiny, powerful truck out on the open highway and see lots of cool stuff.

And there is always something cool to look at.

My truck has a gigantic windshield to peer out of. I sit up high; I look right down into cars and spy upon the drivers (and see what they're up to), I spot interesting old cars over backyard fences, I see what people are growing in their gardens. I can also see far ahead; scanning the horizon for any traffic hazards, "stale" green lights, loony pedestrians, sneaky Cops, glorious taco trucks, pretty girls and lots of wild critters.

I saw a bald eagle the other day. It was sitting in a tree, busily staring off into the distance while I was busy traveling along Hwy 84 along the Columbia Gorge. Seeing a bald eagle while at work? Cool. 

Lately, it has been the Snow Geese in the rice fields. Other times, I spot crows picking at squished carrion at the edge of the interstate, hares and coyotes out in the fields, big-ass elk and pointy Pronghorn Antelope. Red Tail hawks grasping the top of road signs with their toes, looking just like unstable fat chickens. Turkey vultures; they may be majestic in the air, but when walking around on land they strongly resemble self-conscious teenagers.

And I get to see Ospreys! Imagine that.

Correctly identifying row crops at 58 miles an hour has its shortcomings, though I don't really have time to pull over to better inspect. Potato, alfalfa, wheat, chickpea fields and apple groves in Washington. Berry canes, blueberries, hazelnut trees, hops and grass seed in Oregon. Almond, walnut, pistachio, grape, pomegranate and bushy olive plantations in California. (More newly-planted olives, lately. Something about big investors from Spain) Vineyards everywhere. Wineries everywhere, all with French names, most with open tasting rooms and haughty aspirations. ("Vin de Chateau Walla Walla")

I ponder why there are full grown, bearing pistachio trees growing along the freeway embankments, as if some trees escaped their orchard and jumped the fence to make a break for it. And why do yellow daisies only grow in straight lines along freeways (and seemingly, no place else)?

I drive by a lot of RV parks. The RV parks are filled, though it is still winter. They're not filled with people on vacation; they are the domiciles of the today's worker. Mobile Homes are pricey, but used motor homes and fifth wheels are affordable and are mopping up the temporary housing needs. Most RV parks that I see now rent by the month, are filled to capacity and it is clear that those folks are not on vacation. I see their white work trucks (always white) and wonder about their lives, glad that I am not them.

And I get to listen to all the NPR that I can stand. I drive around, leapfrogging from one NPR station to the next one in line. As I lose the signal from one, I fumble around on the left hand of the dial looking for the next one. It is kind of like Steve Inskeep and the overground railroad. I go from KCRW down in Los Angeles to Valley Public Radio to Capitol Public Radio to North State Public Radio to Jefferson Public Radio to KLCC in Eugene to Oregon Public Radio to Boise State Public Radio and so on. Each NPR affiliate is slightly different. Pledge drives, ad infinitum. When beyond the National Prius Radio listening areas, I either avoid the damn religious stations, play whatever CDs I have on hand or listen to podcasts. I devour podcasts, Freakanomics, Radiolab, Selected Shorts and This American Life being my favorites, and nobody is with me to tell me to "turn it down".

Each day can be a bit trying, except when everything works. When things are going reasonably well and I manage to find my way to the shipper's address on time, the rusty trailer tandems cooperate, I manage to get back out on the road in a reasonable time and even locate a clean restroom, life is good. The most important thing: I am steadily employed! And I doubt that I could ever put up with the old life again: commuting nearly an hour in each direction, working in a stifling office and going to pointless meetings run by jerks.

I am seeing too much and having too much fun. There is no turning back now.

You can keep the chains

 
It's winter now, and I am on the home stretch.

By winter, I mean that the weather outside is frightful. I worry that my truck will jackknife and slide right off the side of some icy mountain cliff which would definitely end my career once and for all (if they ever recovered my frozen corpse, that is).

The company that I work for "chains when necessary", (which really means that chaining is not an option) and they also require that their truck drivers stay out there even when only mad dogs and Englishmen are out driving, such as in crappy winter weather. But just how crappy is "crappy enough to require chains"?

The driver has to make a judgement call: chaining up takes time and then you have to drive really slowly. Then you have to stop and remove the chains and that also takes up valuable time. The trick is to accurately predict when to chain but also somehow know when not to chain (sort of a truck driving version of  'know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em'). If you were to crash your truck in ice or snow when you should've chained but you didn't chain, then that would be considered a "preventable accident".

Preventable accidents tend to inhibit one's future employment.

I have only had to "chain" (it's a verb, it's a noun, it's a style of smoking) once so far. I was on I-80, heading eastbound towards the Donner summit with a load of sugar headed for Denver. I did not have the proper warm, waterproof, "high visibility" gear that all the cool-kid trucker dudes were wearing as they "chained up", nor did I have enough experience to even know what the hell that I was doing. It took me about three times as long as everyone else to "throw iron" and the end result was not pretty at all. I am quite an untidy chainer, as it turns out. The chains were sort of secure; I had also attached about a dozen black, rubber shock cords, crisscrossed every which way, but with the chains on you can only drive about 20 miles per hour and, unless they're perfect, they make an awful racket.

My truck was finally chained up, but by then I was cold, wet and absolutely soaked right through to my underpants; adjacent to an area that I generally prefer remain absolutely dry.

Further up the road, the orange overall-wearing dudes from the California Department of Transportation rejected me anyway; I had chained two of the drive wheels correctly but had not chained my two rear trailer wheels as required. And since I was somehow missing one of my trailer chains from my chain stash, I would not permitted to drive any further east than Nyack that night. That was fine with me anyway; my mood had soured, damp underpants and all. I exited down, off the road and parked atop a patch of thick snow alongside some other trucker fellas. Right about then, it got dark and stormy and the snowflakes had become a lot larger and now were sticking to my windshield which effectively blocked out what remained of my world. I typed out a message on the Qualcomm thingie to let dispatch know that it was unsafe to drive and I wouldn't be going anywhere that night.

The word "unsafe" is like a magic word. Once you say that, they can't make you and won't try to force you to drive.

By about 6:00 the next morning, Caltrans had lifted the chain restrictions and my outlook had also improved, though that was mostly the result of my changing into dry clothes. I drove back out onto I-80, continued onward eastbound, driving slowly and carefully on the Interstate of ice towards Reno. I didn't die, as it turned out, though I promised myself to never (ever ever!) chain up again. I'll simply use the magic word. And this is a very, very dry, mild winter. Imagine if I lived and "drove truck" in North Dakota!

I freely admit: I am a fair-weather weenie from California.

By "home stretch", I mean that I have been driving for over nine months, which means that I am almost to one year of being a trucker. My current employer is considered a "training company"; they are one (from a fairly small list of companies) that will take on freshly-minted truck school graduate greenhorns and whip them into shape.

While this is absolutely commendable (they gave me a job, after all), it does not come without sacrifice: newbie drivers are paid newbie wages. One is effectively an apprentice with a thoughtful stipend thrown in (should one care to purchase an occasional hotdog off of the heated, steel rollers).
If the newbie can survive his first year, more opportunities present themselves and those opportunities may include better pay and benefits.

Most newbies do not survive the first year.

After the one year mark, the company that I work for bumps up the pay by four cents a mile, which comes out to about $300 extra a month. And $300 buys a lot of hotdogs.

With that kind of money, that will make me one with everything.